Should we have sunk the Bismarck? Tormented sailor reveals how Germans tried to surrender before ship was destroyed costing 2,000 lives

With her steering jammed and her speed slashed by torpedo attacks, the Bismarck and her crew of 2,200 were a sitting duck for the Royal Navy.

And in two hours the German battleship was a helpless wreck of twisted metal, raging fires and dead and dying crew.

But the ship’s agony was not over. After the bombardment by British battleships, she was finished off by torpedoes, slipping under the Atlantic with all but 200 of those aboard.

Tommy Byers, pictured left aged 78 and, right, as a young sailor during WWII. He witnessed the attempted surrender of the Bismarck 70 years ago

This scene from the film Sink The Bismarck shows the destroyer ablaze and shortly before she sank with the loss of 2,206 men

Sinking the Bismarck was revenge for the destruction of HMS Hood, seen here at full speed, days earlier

For the Royal Navy it was a triumph – revenge for the Bismarck’s destruction of the pride of the fleet, HMS Hood, days earlier.

But the son of one of the British sailors who saw Bismarck’s end 70 years ago today has come forward to claim that the battle might have ended very differently – because the German crew tried to surrender at the height of the bombardment.

Tommy Byers, a sailor on the British battleship Rodney, maintained until he died that the ship, which was sunk hundreds of miles off the coast of Brittany, France, hoisted a black flag – the naval sign calling for parley.

The launching of the battleship Bismarck at Hamburg in 1939. Had the Bismarck been captured the ship would also have been a prized catch, giving Navy engineers an insight into the design of Bismarck¿s mighty sistership, Tirpitz

Bismarck view from astern, before her May 1941 breakout to attack Allied shipping. The stern fell off when she turned over on being sunk, due to poor welding

He and a second seaman also saw a Morse code flash, which they
interpreted as surrender, along with a man waving semaphore flags
conveying the same message.

Royal Navy officers were made aware of
the signs but were determined to follow Winston Churchill’s order to
‘sink the Bismarck’. The Prime Minister wanted to avenge the Hood, on
which all but three of its 1,418 crew had died.

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Had the Bismarck been captured, the lives of hundreds of Germans could
have been saved. The ship would also have been a prized catch, giving
Navy engineers an insight into the design of Bismarck’s mighty
sistership, Tirpitz.

The Bismarck at sea during her doomed May 1941 deployment into the Atlantic

WHY WE COULDN'T ACCEPT THE SURRENDER

There are strong arguments to support the Royal Navy's decision to ignore the attempt by some on Bismarck to surrender.

According to Navy accounts, the Bismarck never stopped returning fire, so they were faced with little choice but to destroy it.

Terry Charman, senior historian at the Imperial War Museum, said: 'The Bismarck's admiral was a fairly fanatical believer in Hitler and the telegrams he sent were along the lines of "we will fight to the end".

'It would have been very dangerous to take the surrender.

'HMS Devonshire picked up 200 survivors but had to leave a lot of men behind because there was U-boat activity in the area.'

The revelation has been unearthed by author Iain Ballantyne for a
book about the Bismarck which has been published 70 years after the
sinking on May 27, 1941.

One account he came across was an interview Mr Byers gave to his son Kevin before he died in 2004 aged 86.

Mr
Byers, a gunnery officer on Rodney, saw the battle unfold through
binoculars at a distance of two miles. The Rodney had closed to what was
point-blank range in gunnery terms because the Bismarck was no longer
firing back.

Mr Byers said: ‘Very early on men started jumping
over board. They couldn’t stand the heat. One particular fella on top of
B turret was waving his arms in semaphore.

‘I saw this and I told the gunnery officer, Lieutenant Commander Crawford. He said, “I don’t want to know about any signal now”. She then flew a black flag…but he (Crawford) wasn’t having any of it.

‘Then she started blinking with her Morse lamps on the yard arm and he (Crawford) said “Don’t report anything more like that”.’

Kevin Byers, 52, from Portaferry, County Down, said: ‘Dad knew what he saw. He felt guilty he didn’t do more at the time but he wasn’t of high enough rank to be heard.

‘Something like 2,000 men died and this nagged away at him for the rest of his life.’

Tommy Byers in 1948 towards the end of his Naval career

The second witness was Lieutenant Donald Campbell, the air defence officer on HMS Rodney. In his account of the sinking he said he saw the morse signal. This was also reported by a sailor on the cruiser HMS Dorsetshire.

The Bismarck had been hunted down relentlessly.

Crippled by torpedo attacks from the carrier Ark Royal, she tried to limp towards France but was cornered by Rodney and another battleship, King George V.

Terry Charman, of the Imperial War Museum, said the admiral on Bismarck had sent telegrams to Hitler that the ship would fight to the end. But he added: ‘It may be some of the crew wanted to surrender, they were in a hopeless position.’

Ian Ballantyne's book Killing The Bismarck is published by Pen and Sword Books.

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Should we have sunk the Bismarck? Tormented sailor reveals how German sailors tried to surrender before ship was destroyed costing 2,000 lives